When that was translated, everyone in the room, including Shaibani and Tofaa, gave a gasp, all of astonishment, but variously also of chagrin, relief and admiration. I went on:
“Each man in this room will be accompanied by a guard patrol back to his residence or business establishment, and all those plundered treasures will be retrieved. Any person of Akyab refusing to comply, or later found to be hoarding any such property, will be summarily executed. The emissary of the Khan of All Khans has spoken. Tremble, all men, and obey.”
As the guards herded the men out, wailing and lamenting, the Lady Tofaa fell down flat on her face, totally prone before me, which is the abject Hindu equivalent of the more sedate salaam or ko-tou, and Shaibani regarded me with a sort of awe, saying:
“Elder Brother Marco Polo, you are a real Mongol. You put this one to shame—for not himself having thought of that master stroke.”
“You can make up for it,” I said genially. “Find me a trusty ship and crew that will take me and my new interpreter immediately across the Bay of Bangala.” I turned to Yissun. “I will not drag you there, for you would be as speechless as I. So I relieve you from that duty, Yissun, and you may report back to Bayan or to your former commander at Bhamo. I shall be sorry not to have you with me, for you have been a staunch companion.”
“It is I who should be sorry for you, Marco,” he said, and pityingly shook his head. “To be on duty in Ava is a dreadful enough fate. But India …?”
INDIA
1
NO sooner had our vessel cast off from the Akyab dock than Tofaa Devata said to me, very primly, “Marco-wallah,” and began to lay down rules for our good behavior while we traveled together.
Since I was no longer being a Lord Justice, I had given her leave to address me less formally, and she told me that the -wallah was a Hindu suffixion which denoted both respect and friendliness. I had not given her leave, as well, to preach at me. But I listened politely and even managed not to laugh.
“Marco-wallah, you must realize that it would be a grave sin for us to lie together, and exceedingly wicked in the sight of both men and gods. No, do not look so stricken. Let me explain, and you will be less heartbroken by your unrequited yearning. You see, your judicial decision resolved that dispute back yonder in Akyab, but without deciding on the merits of the opposing arguments, so those arguments must still be taken into account in our relationship. On the one hand, if my dear late husband was still my husband at his death, then I am still sati, unless and until I remarry, so you would be committing the very worst of sins when you lay with me. If, for example, over yonder in India, we were caught in the act of surata, you would be sentenced to do surata with a fire-filled, incandescent brass statue of a woman, until you scorched and shriveled horribly to death. And then, after death, you would have to abide in the underworld called Kala, and suffer its fires and torments, for as many years as there are pores on my body. On the other hand, if I am now technically the slave of that Akyab creature who won me at dice, then your lying with me, his slave woman, would make you also legally his slave. In any event, I am of the Brahman jati—the highest of the four jati divisions of Hindu humankind—and you are of no jati at all, and therefore inferior. So, when we lay together, we would be defying and defiling the sacred jati order, and in punishment we would be thrown to those dogs trained to eat such heretics. Even if you were gallantly willing to risk that frightful death by raping me, I am still held to be an equal defiler and subject to the same grisly punishment. If it is ever known in India that you put your linga into my yoni, whether I actively engulf it or only passively spread myself for it, we are both in terrible disgrace and peril. Of course I am not a kanya, a green and unripe and flavorless virgin. Since I am a widow of some experience, not to say talent and ability and a capacious, warm, well-lubricated zankha, there would be no physical evidence of our sin. And I daresay these barbarian sailors would take no notice of what we civilized persons might do in private. So it would probably never be known in my homeland that you and I had reveled in ecstatic surata out here on the gentle ocean waters under the caressing moon. But we must desist as soon as we touch my native land, for all Hindus are most adept at scenting the least whiff of scandal, and crying shame and jeering nastily, and demanding bribes to keep silent about it, and then gossiping and tattling anyway.”
She had exhausted either her breath or the myriad aspects of the subject, so I said mildly, “Thank you for the useful instruction, Tofaa, and set your mind at ease. I will observe all the proprieties.”
“Oh.”
“Let me suggest just one thing.”
“Ah!”
“Do not call the crewmen sailors. Call them seamen or mariners.”
“Ugh.”
The Sardar Shaibani had gone to some trouble to find for us a good ship, not a flimsy Hindu-built coasting dinghi, but a substantial lateen-rigged Arab qurqur merchant vessel that could sail straight across the vast Bay of Bangala instead of having to skirt around its circumference. The crew was composed entirely of some very black, wiry, extraordinarily tiny men of a race called Malayu, but the captain was a genuine Arab, sea-wise and capable. He was taking his ship to Hormuz, away west in Persia, but had agreed (for a price) to take me and Tofaa as far as the Cholamandal. That was an open-sea, no-sight-of-land crossing of some three thousand li, about half as far as my longest voyage to date: the one from Venice to Acre. The captain warned us, before departure, that the bay could be a boat-eater. It was crossable only between the months of September and March—we were doing it in October—because only in that season were the winds right and the weather not murderously hot. However, during that season, when the bay had got itself nicely provided with a copious meal of many vessels bustling east and west across its surface, it would frequently stir up a tai-feng storm and capsize and sink and swallow them all.
But we encountered no storm and the weather stayed fine, except at night, when a dense fog often obscured the moon and stars, and wrapped us in wet gray wool. That did not slow the qurqur, since the captain could steer by his bussola needle, but it must have been miserably uncomfortable for the half-naked black crewmen who slept on the deck, because the fog collected in the rigging and dripped down a constant clammy dew. We two passengers, however, had a cabin apiece, and were snug enough, and we were given food enough, though it was not viand dining, and we were not attacked or robbed or molested by the crew. The Muslim captain naturally despised Hindus even more than Christians, and stayed aloof from our company, and he kept the seamen forever busy, so Tofaa and I were left to our own diversions. That we had none—beyond idly watching the flying fish skimming over the waves and the porkfish frolicking among the waves—did not discourage Tofaa from prattling about what diversions we must not succumb to.
“My strict but wise religion, Marco-wallah, holds that there is more than one sinfulness involved in lying together. So it is not just the sweet surata that you must put out of your mind, poor frustrated man. In addition to surata—the actual physical consummation—there are eight other aspects. The very least of them is as real and culpable as the most passionate and heated and sweaty and enjoyable embrace of surata. First there is smarana, which is thinking of doing surata. Then there is kirtana, which is speaking of doing it. Speaking to a confidant, I mean, as you might discuss with the captain your barely controllable desire for me. Then there is keli, which is flirting and dallying with the man or woman of one’s affection. Then there is prekshana, which means peeping secretly at his or her kaksha—the unmentionable parts—as for example you frequently do when I am bathing over the bucket back yonder on the afterdeck. Then there is guyabhashana, which is conversing on the subject, as you and I are so riskily doing at this moment. Then there is samkalpa, which is intending to do surata. Then there is adyavasaya, which is resolving to do it. Then there is kriyanishpati, which is … well … doing it. Which we must not.”